George Will on Barbara Boxer

August 3, 2010

George Will makes something of the fact that Barbara Boxer believes parents have the right to decide whether their newborn is a person or not. If his logic is sound, then it means a class of citizens are being denied rights that are actually stated in the Constitution, rather than construed by expansionist judges.

I emailed him several years ago on this subject, but I haven’t seen him deal with the issue I brought up. This is not just Barbara Boxer’s belief. It is a matter of state law in California. A person who murders a pregnant woman in that state can be tried for two murders not just one.

The contradiction is obvious. A fetus/child can not simultaneously be accorded Constitutional protections and be deemed not worthy of Constitutional protections. It either is or it isn’t. But in this case the assumed (in this scenario she’s been killed) belief of the mother is what confers the right to life.

Thus, you are a human being if some other person decides you are. You could do a lot with that to declare whole classes of citizens unworthy of Constitutional protections.